simmsimaging
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Posts posted by simmsimaging
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The first line of his second paragraph: "One of the questions that seems to come up is whether the Ptex file format is needed or not."
I read that as a question often asked of him, not his POV. Either way though, he speaks to that pretty clearly just a couple of lines after that:
"We tried sending these packed textures
directly to Renderman at one point (before Ptex) but it didn't give us
the performance or filter quality that we wanted. For us, the Ptex
file format and rendering performance is critical."
Given the accuracy/detail you can get with it, and the potential overhead control/drop if render engines support the format, why wouldn't this be better than PP in 3DC? Have I misunderstood things? (again)
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So far, unless other 3d apps offer support. I thought the results worked well considering the texture map is a complete patchwork of tiles! Need to test with animation next though. In anycase, the more popular this format gets, the more chance someone will write some import plugins.
Yep, I agree - it's quite workable for now, but I'm always after the best detail, so if I can see it around the corner I won't be content to settle if I don't have to
If you saw my quote from the guy at Disney above, after seeing the 3D-Coat results he questions whether there is even a need for a ptex format.
Maybe that is in another message from him? I didn't read that into what was quoted anyway. However, there seem to be some pretty clear advantages to Ptex from what I have seen so far so not sure why he would say that.
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So here is the result of all the testing/playing and help from Artman and the others on the forum:
Original renders were about 6K each (this file is about 30K pixels wide at full res
)Thanks to all for the help with this - I really appreciate it.
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And the last one: imported for Ptex. This for sure is the best.
I imported at a few resolutions, but in the end found starting high and not having to up the res later works best. This was imported at 60million polys, which gave me a starting point of 6-7 2K maps. I upped the res in a couple of places to see how that worked - it's pretty amazing.
I can only seem to work with 2K maps though - using the "increase mesh and texture resolution" function totally screwed things up - gave me a semi invisible object that I couldn't paint on.
Now - the trick is (yet again) getting this detail out
Exporting the .obj or even trying to export texture maps gives me (for this model and after increasing re in a few places) about 12 texture maps, all at whatever size I wanted (in this case I chose 8K). It took a while to pump those out. I tossed those as I don't have a render engine that can use them. I guess the only way to export the results from a mulit-res Ptex paint is via Texture Baking?
I did try this and it worked pretty well (see second attachment - that is the map on the lo-res mesh rendered in Vray). I chose for the target the same lo-res that I painted on and it worked pretty well, although there is a loss of detail through this process, it's pretty good. Is this the only/best way to get a single usable map out of Ptex right now? Obviously the ideal solution is to have a render engine that supports Ptex - but until then....
Thanks /b
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One thing that would be very useful is adding this function as a brush option. It's something I love in Zbrush and (really wish existed in Photoshop too). Very handy when you want to paint a smaller area of your model but want to keep the brush texture size consistent. By having an adjustable edge fade you can contract the size of the brush and keep the core texture the same. Having an adjustable edge hardness to that fade would also be great.
Any chance of that?
Thanks /b
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Definitely better - but it's still not really fine detail. There is a level at which 3DC matches ZB, but then it just falls short IMO. Here is an example. It's the same mesh as my example in ZB above, but exported to 3DC. I exported a 17K poly mesh and imported through MV. I chose mesh resolution of 20 Million, and texture is 8K. This crop is approximately the same size area as the ZB example. I exported the main alpha brush I used in ZB, so that would be the same too. I think the difference is quite apparent.
Don't get me wrong - I am not a 3DC witch-hunt. I *want* to be able to use it. Just can't seem to find a way to get what I need out of it.
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Here is one imported for PP painting. This actually seems much better to me. I imported with the base mesh at 17K and the texture at 8K, and also opted to try subdividing on import so it was about a 70K mesh and 8K texture. I don't think there was really any difference in the detail though. Should the mesh res affect how much detail you get in PP painting? (I didn't think so, but not sure).
So this is better for sure, and I may have sort of stumbled onto another complicating factor that might be a source of a lot of my problems: when I scaled down a brush in 3DC it really gets super coarse looking. It almost seems that 3DC is interpolating the source image down very roughly. Is it possible that the interpolation algorithm used to scale down brushes for painting could use a tweak, or is that just me?
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1024 was an example, the same goes for 8k, it's still 8k pixels when exported from any program.
BTW that image above was only a 2k texture I'm having a little trouble loading an 8k right now, but 4k is also quite nice.
Definitely better - but it's still not really fine detail. There is a level at which 3DC matches ZB, but then it just falls short IMO. Here is an example. It's the same mesh as my example in ZB above, but exported to 3DC. I exported a 17K poly mesh and imported through MV. I chose mesh resolution of 20 Million, and texture is 8K. This crop is approximately the same size area as the ZB example. I exported the main alpha brush I used in ZB, so that would be the same too. I think the difference is quite apparent.
Don't get me wrong - I am not a 3DC witch-hunt. I *want* to be able to use it. Just can't seem to find a way to get what I need out of it.
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It makes sense I just find it hard to believe. Pixels are pixels no matter what program they come out of. If you've got 1024 pixels in one image then same image exported from another program will still only have 1024 pixels.
Yep, but I export my normal map at 8K, not 1K. I get that there are limits, but I don't impose such strict ones myself
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The thing is, your zbrush model in the example will lose at least some of that detail when you bake it to textures. Unless of course you use multiple UV maps for the model. A single texture maps can only hold fine detail to a certain point before it starts getting blocky. If you use multiple UV maps for the 3DC model you will also get super fine details. Of course going back to Ptex this is a nice feature of being able to change texture resolution on a per-polygon basis. You can see this in my Ptex
(at about 2:35) where I've painted on some fine detail but when I zoom in you can see that detail starts to look blocky due to the texture size, so I increase the resolution in that spot and it looks finer.I'm definitely interested in the Ptex possibilities - and I've watched your vid already for sure
The thing is: I can get damn close to that detail out of Zbrush using normal maps and reasonably hi-res meshes. I'm not trying to get super low poly models out. I'm working on a pipeline right now (with the help of Artman and a few other people) to get high res geometry out to use rather than resorting to maps. At current normal maps and *fairly* high geo seems to be the way, and I can dispose of the displacement map hassle (and loss of detail that may come with that). In that case I can definitely get this level of detail out of Zbrush.
I would be happy to see something close out of 3DC, at least to see something like it in the viewport so I can tell what my bump/normal maps look like as I create them.
Does that make sense?
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Think ths is quite close to yours...
Think ths is quite close to yours...
It's getting close for sure. I don't think it's quite as sharp and tight, but let's say it's tight enough though: how do you get it out of there in a way that can be rendered in Max/Vray and hold that detail?
Re: you other post:
If you can't step down from surface mode then you have to nail it in one - which is acceptable in my mind, but getting that detail out of the voxel room and onto a renderable and paintable mesh has proven tough for me too.
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Did you try the surface mode in voxels? This I understand works the same as Zbrush - using actual polys.
Tried it, but when you go back to Voxel mode and export it all just disappears. Maybe if you stay in surface mode only, but going back and forth does not seem possible. I didn't get too far with this workflow though, because exporting from Voxels to paint (quadrangulate and paint - didn't want to retopo) gave me a crazy blocky mesh and I more or less just gave up on that approach and went back to Zbrush.
Is it doable this way?
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Maybe this will help clarify and there will be an answer on this question
Attached are two screen caps of some detail I hacked into a current working object. At the moment this one is sub-d'd up to almost 18M points in Zbrush, so it is admittedly dense. However you can see how zoomed in that detail shot is by comparing it to the overall - it's quite micro detail.
Can I get that level of detail in 3DC? If so, how? I've tried voxels to no avail and sculpting can't get close, so painting a depth map seemed to be the way to go - but I've never gotten even close to this except to paint it as a texture map only, and then load that as a bump in Max/Vray.
Don't get me wrong - I know 3DC can paint that level of *texture* detail on a high enough res map (via Per Pixel anyway) but no way have I seen anything close in the depth channel in the viewport. Because I can actually *see* this detail in ZB it is much easier to create there.
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You can't tell from my screenshot but I am actually zoomed in very close so those jaggies are barely noticeable while you're working. You can't expect to sculpt on a low to medium res. model and get visual feedback like it's billions of polys.
.... I kinda thought that I could: my understanding is that was what painting via a depth map would allow, versus sculpting actual geometry. However, I can do more with actual geometry in Zbrush than I can do with textures in 3DC - and not by using "billions" of polys, maybe more like 3-10 million. Still a lot mind you
. That is the part I still don't really get and I've never been able to find an explanation - it just doesn't seem to come up, which is surprising to me.Anyway, I'm not sure how the zooming in of your reference impacts, because that is about as good as I can get out of 3DC at any zoom. If there is a way to get real tight detail I would love to know how.
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I'm really blown away by people not wanting layers to texture with. It's like someone saying Avatar was horrible movie.
As for the depth the screen representation looks fine to me:
Maybe I misunderstood or mis-wrote: layers is great, but for single textures. What I don't need is spec/bump/color at the same time.
Your screen cap kinda highlights exactly what I"m talking about: you see it as fine, but to me it's all to coarse and there are artifacts everywhere. I don't know if that's just the screen smoothing of 3DC (which always seems poor on my models) or if that is how coarse the depth would actually be. I tend to just paint bumps etc as a black and white color texture and just use it as a bump later - can't get anywhere close to the same level of detail when using depth.
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We have not had much call for implementing 3d layers in our paint tool....
Having layers could be useful in some cases, but it hasn't been a
priority.
Totally agree with this. I find the visualization of spec in particular is largely useless as it does not interact with the surface attributes in any kind of meaningful way. I might paint depth maps at the same time as color maps, but since you can't effectively control the options for depth in a single brush it's rarely useful to me - plus I find the screen representation of depth is very crude/rough.
My .02 would be to disable that stuff and ramp up the texture size or mesh size that 3DC can move around
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Ok,I see loss of details now...
hmmm,I think for this method to work,the final 0utput mesh would have been 5mil...
I can still send you an higher version but you probably decimated in the first to not deal with a model above 2mil..
Yeah, the original mesh was around 6-8M poly's (forget now) and I decimated it because this is one of several pieces in the final image and the poly count was getting out of hand. Even using proxies the rendertimes were skyrocketing. Also wanted to play with sculpting more and couldn't sub-d beyond that on my system (didn't want to use HD geometry because I wanted actual geometry to work with).
Really the only way to get the hi-res final mesh that I want is to live with minor artifacts, not decimate the mesh, or find a way to UV a high poly decimated mesh outside of ZB. AUV/PUV/GUV all create useless UV's - that is where that artifact problem with the baked textures was coming from. Unfortunately I have no other practical way of doing UV's for a 1.2M poly object.
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On left is Decimated Hires from your .Zlt, On the right is Hires export from microvertex.
It is the exact mesh you will be painting on in 3DC.
I looked at them closely,there is no loss of details and polycount is similar.
In zbrush the 3DCoat export object look a little better than the same object in Paintroom but they are the same I just exported from Paint room without any changes.(Zbrush shading makes object look better.)
Here is workflow used,I think it was my first or second suggestion.
-made a lowpoly Unified Skin out of your Decimated Hires
-applied Puv to Unified skin lowpoly and exported to .obj
-exported decimated Hires as well to .obj
In 3DCoat
-import Hires as Reference Mesh
-import lowpoly in retopo room
-merge to Microvertex using those settings
:300k carcass mesh
:4millions polys (to match texture size)
:2048x2048 texture size(2048x2048=4194304polys)
Merging was very fast,and result is what you get when loading the .3b I sent you.
Painting is fast enough(only deleting layers seams to be slow)
Then I deleted the Reference mesh.
Cleared the Retopo mesh.
And used File-Export Hires Mesh(first iteration=4x carcass mesh(approx 1.3 million polys)
The result is the .obj you see in screenshot above and that you can use in your Vray render,
All exported maps from the .3b file will perfectly fit on that .obj without artifacts.
Thanks very much for taking the time to do this Artman - I really appreciate it.
I think this method will work great for most things. There is a loss of fine detail between the original mesh and the new mesh, which is something I'd hoped to save, but it's the level of detail that could be done with a normal/bump map which could be painted up in 3DC anyway.
Or I could go back to your first suggestion with this model and use this method and texture bake back to the original full res mesh. The only problem with that route is the messed up UV's you get out of Zbrush with a decimated mesh.
It's certainly worlds better than where I was - thanks again for all the help. I owe you one.
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Sure,its definitely not normal...
Upload it Ill send you back a paintready .3b file + higres .obj with same Uvs to receive maps.
I wonder if the fact that decimated mesh has Auvs on can affect project all speed...
That would be weird considering that Uvs are not needed in the process..
(You can add password to .rar and pm me password if it is client work..)
Really appreciate you taking the time. I just PM'd you a link for the Ztool version of the mesh (already decimated - this would be my "final" hi-res mesh)
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It seams looking at his first ZB pics that he is using real handmade uvs.
It must be hard for Decimation master to preseve Uvs quality from automated tilings.
I still dont understand why Zb choke on Project all tough.
I dont have a crazy machine and i can reproject 1-3 mil betwwen 2-8 minutes max.
-The best would be to create a very low unified skin 100-000.
-Then PUV.
-Then subdivide up to 3mil
-Append your decimated as subtool.
-Then Project all
-Export level 1 and last subd Level
-now 3DC import big mesh should work like charm.
Of course,you already tried that..but still,I think it is besh approach for your actual situation.
Maybe you dont wait long enough for Project all to finish?How long does Zb estimate projection time?
I did try it that way but It did not even give me an estimated time. However, last night I decided to try again and it ran for 7 hours but was just hanging - no result. If I uploaded the mesh would you be willing to give it a try? This is driving me nuts.
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For my model i cant find any strange uvs on the decimated mash.In my opinion if u hawe uvs before u decimate and save an lover sdiv level in Zb u get nice results.It is important to check keep uvs .The texture is made for an very low In game model (3,200 polys)but all difrent mashes hawe same uvs.In my case the uvs are identic.in the pictures are the decimated and the lower res mash from Zb(almost 40,000 polys)
Zbrush can import uvs after u model al u want .I seen an tutorial an he say that u need an model with same vertex order on the lowest sdiv level .so u have the ztool on sdiv level 1 and import an mash with same vertex order that has uvs made in external prog.After he import the mash he culd change the sdiv levels and have new uvs.(every subtool has its own imported mash i think.)
It may just be that your maps are more forgiving - not sure. Here are two images. I UV'd the object in Zbrush using PUV, sub-divided to 2-3M polys. Exported a lo-res (about 30K) poly's and then decimated to create a 300K Decimated hi-res and exported that. I imported the non-decimated lo-res into 3DC and roughed out this map. Both were imported into Max and the same map was applied to both - you can see the different results.
However, the results are even worse when I do this using the two decimation level approach. The UV's from the decimated lo-res are even more screwed up compared to the hi-res decimated mesh. My feeling is that decimation is not going to be very useful for real accurate detail, unless I'm doing something else wrong.
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EDIT: just to be clear - this is a map painted on the lo-res UV"d object, and then applied to the same, and then applied to the result of the decimation process. The map painted for the lo-res pre-decimated mesh do not work on the decimated mesh very well.
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I think it could be res related, the attached is the new map (painted at 8K via Per-Pixel on the new "medium" res mesh made as per Artman's direction) but rendered at 2K via TExture Baking. It's not just lo-res, it's totally messed. Is this expected?
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It's looking like this problem is coming from the UV's out of Zbrush. I redid the process and I can get the artifacts in Zbrush as well. It is something to do with AUV tiling on decimated meshes. I am not yet sure if this happens with GUV/PUV or other modes as the mesh is too dense for that, so I'll try it on lower res.
I am really just getting the vibe that you should just make sure you have some decent UV's long before you ever think about decimating, then you should be able to use one of several methods outlined in this thread.
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I show u this becoz u said u cant import decimated mashes for per pixel p.And if u hawe uvs before decimation and save an lover resolution of Zb model u kan use it to pain.For my model the uvs are the same for the low rez zb model and the decimated mash.
Zbrush its faster becoze its using subdiv levels.If u want to paint on the decimated model i bet its mowing mutch slower.
So 3d coat needs subdiv levels (my thinking)
You are correct: I was not able to import my decimated meshes - but mine were nearly twice the size or yours (900K +) so maybe that's why yours worked and mine didn't. Anyway, you are right that if you have it UV'd prior to decimation then you can work as per normal and just paint on the lo-res mesh, but the decimated UV's and the lo-res non-decimated UV's do not match exactly and you get texture artifacts/oddness when using the maps painted for one on the other. In some cases that may not matter, but it is not accurate enough for my use.
For me it is better to have a more exact match of lo and hi res, so either both are decimated, or neither are, and then the painted maps work no problem - but getting lo and hi decimated meshes is proving problematic. Right now the only hold up is you have to UV *before* decimation, because doing it after causes other issues. In most cases this should be fine, but in this one case I screwed up the UV's.
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i did it like this
I made an mistake in explination .Zb dont export texture in obj ,but it exports the texture in same folder.There are 2 files the obj and the texture.And 3d coat has applied the texture saved in folder.
Thanks for sharing that detailed workflow. If you are importing your high res decimated mesh then for sure you can import and paint right on it (although I'm finding it should be UV'd prior to decimation, as the decimated mesh doesn't seem to work with AUV and it's a hassle to UV any other way). The high res mesh is probably why it's lagging though.
It would be perfect if 3DC could be optimized to paint on hi-res mesh like ZB. Then all this lo/high res stuff would be redundant.
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I have not read through the entire thread but as i understand it you have trouble painting textures on your highpoly mesh Brett, why don't you simply polypaint it directly in Zbrush. Paint each map here, export them out and map them onto your mesh and build the final material with the different maps you painted in Zbrush. Then you don't have to rip your hair out when you attempt to do it in 3DC. That's what i do and it works just fine for my highpoly Zbrush sculpts.
/ Magnus
Painting in ZBrush is possible, but I much prefer the tools in 3DC - for texture painting it's hard to beat. Polypainting can be very fast though, and for some stuff it's fine. If I run into too many snags I may have to switch to that route, but I'd prefer to stay with 3DC if I can.
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Ptex format for 3DCoat?
in General 3DCoat
Posted
For sure - this is a great addition to 3DC.
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